THE ROSETTA STONE by John Norton Loughborough

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Apr 3, 1900

THE ROSETTA STONE.

By John Norton Loughborough

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.

When I was visiting the British Museum a short time ago, having just passed through the Assyrian department, in which are many stones, tablets, and plates bearing inscriptions in hieroglyphics, demotic, and cuneiform characters, — the work executed by the hands of men centuries before the first advent of Christ, — I came to the famous Rosetta Stone, and read with greater interest than ever before the explanation placed beside it.

It is there stated that this record upon the stone was inscribed one hundred and ninety-eight years before the birth of Christ, and that the inscription is in three forms of writing. The first is in hieroglyphic, the form used by the priests; the second in demotic, that used by the common people; the third in Greek. This Rosetta Stone was thus the grand key that unlocked the mysterious characters on the ancient monumental pillars and tablets. On reading the Greek, it was ascertained that the same thing was said in the other two forms of writing. By the aid of this key, those hitherto silent inscriptions of these ancient writings were unsealed.

This Rosetta Stone was discovered by the French at Fort St. Julien, on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, in the year 1798, and was placed in the British Museum in the year 1802.

While looking at the stone and the descriptive tablet, I was deeply impressed with the date of the discovery of this grand key to the writings on those ancient monuments and tablets. It was discovered just at the time when special knowledge on the Lord’s word was to be brought before the world. The Lord said to Daniel, “The words are closed up and sealed till, the time of the end.” Dan. 12:9. And again, “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Verse 4.

The time of the end is marked, in Dan. 11:35, as the close of the “appointed time” of the warfare of the “horn” against the people of God. That horn was the persecuting power that lost its civil dominion in the overthrow of Pius VI, in 1798. That date, 1798, begins the period called in prophecy “the time of the end.” With this increase of knowledge in the Word came also the Lord’s time for his “two witnesses” — the Old and New Testaments — to finish their testimony in sackcloth, or obscurity, and come into a position of prominence before the world, compared to an ascension to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies beheld them. Rev. 11:7–12.

The British and Foreign Bible Society, organized in 1804, may be mentioned as one of the agents that brought the Bible more prominently before the people. The organization of this society was soon followed by the formation of numerous other Bible societies, which have placed millions of copies of the Sacred Scriptures in the hands of the people of all the leading languages of the world, and in nearly every dialect of those various tongues.

While the Word has thus been brought into prominence before the world, the enemy of all righteousness has made fierce attacks upon it, seeking to weaken the force of its teachings, and to contradict some of its historical statements. While this has been going on upon the one hand, upon the other hand the pick and shovel of man have been exhuming, from the ruins of ancient cities and temples, the tablets and stones bearing witness in their hieroglyphic, demotic, and cuneiform inscriptions to the very facts that the skeptics have denied. For instance, while men were doubting whether there ever was such a priest-ruler as Melchisedec, out came tablets exhumed along the banks of the Nile, about 1892, containing records made 1430 B. C.; and in these tablets are letters written by “Melchisedec, king of Salem.”

Again: more recently, while the skeptical were claiming that there never were such persons as Mordecai and Esther, and that the book of Esther in the Bible was merely a Jewish myth, there was exhumed, 1899, from the ruins of Susa, the ancient capital of Persia, the relics of a temple on whose walls is inscribed that it was erected “in memory of the good Queen Esther and her kinsman Mordecai, the grand vizier, both of whom lie buried at Ecbatana.” The records corroborate completely the statements presented in the book of Esther, in the Bible.

Then, again, while the great question of the Sabbath as God’s great memorial of creation, founded at the close of the first seven days of the world’s history, is being proclaimed to men, some ministers, in opposition, have claimed that the sanctifying of the day did not take place until the law was spoken from Mt. Sinai, and that the fourth commandment is not speaking of what took place at creation, but at Sinai. Out of the earth come tablets that demolish such a theory. In the fifth tablet from the library of Assur-bani-pal, prepared about 700 B. C., and exhumed about 1876, is distinct mention made of the Sabbath as instituted at the close of creation week, and as observed by the “Accadians,” — the descendants of “Accad.” See Gen. 10:10.

In view of the fact that these ancient tablets, with their otherwise mysterious hieroglyphics, etc., are bearing witness against the infidelic thrusts made at the divine records, which characters would have remained a mystery except for the aid of this key on the Rosetta Stone, you can see what led me, while standing before this stone, to rejoice and praise God for his fatherly care over his word, which he has exalted and magnified above all his name. And I still say, Praise the Lord! He preserveth his truth to all generations.